Bloodlust is pretty damn good, stormlash is pretty damn great. I'm not saying rogues are bad or that enhance shamans or WW monks do more damage than we do. I'm saying that they (WW monks in particular, who are definitely ahead of us in damage consistently) bring way more to the group than we do. If our damage is ahead (which it really isn't compared to WW monks), it's not by enough to make up for the poor raid cooldowns we bring in comparison. Smoke bomb is fine and all, but it's just not on the same level as almost anyone else's defensive raid CDs. Not to mention our piss poor AoE compared to WW monks, and target-swap ability.

Apparently rogues sucking so bad and bringing inferior utility is why none of the top 5 25H guilds brought any to most of progression, and certainly no guild, even Blood Legion, would find a reason to bring 5 to Iron Qon...

I'm sorry, but I've got a hard time parsing your statement that our damage and utility (both) aren't top-tier when every 25H guild brings rogues (1-5, mostly 2-4) by fight during progression. We're not talking about one group - rogues were a desired class to have around during progression this tier. Some of those were alts; they swapped to bring a rogue to the group.

Do you want to bring some links showing how rogues are falling behind in damage or elaborate further on how our utility (smokebomb, absurd personal survival/immunes) is falling behind WW or Enhance? Warriors aren't keeping up in damage enough to justify bringing more than one most of the time right now (they went 0-3 by fight by group, if I followed right, and most 25s brought exactly one for RC/banners, presumably). WW monks were similarly rare...? Although they did receive a buff, I'm told that the damage variance is too RNG to rely on these days.

Smokebomb isn't really laughable either... negating boss mechanics, concentrating adds (for Megaera in particular, a la mass-grip from DKs) and a 20% DR just aren't really bad abilities, at all. I know it's not a +damage CD, but 20% adds up in some situations, and is +1 tank CD if needed.

I could be wrong and see us get benched through the entirety of next tier after the WW/Enh buffs, but I'm just not seeing it (and not sure how the new 5.4 changes to WW will change things).

Apparently rogues sucking so bad and bringing inferior utility is why none of the top 5 25H guilds brought any to most of progression, and certainly no guild, even Blood Legion, would find a reason to bring 5 to Iron Qon...

I'm sorry, but I've got a hard time parsing your statement that our damage and utility (both) aren't top-tier when every 25H guild brings rogues (1-5, mostly 2-4) by fight during progression. We're not talking about one group - rogues were a desired class to have around during progression this tier. Some of those were alts; they swapped to bring a rogue to the group.

Do you want to bring some links showing how rogues are falling behind in damage or elaborate further on how our utility (smokebomb, absurd personal survival/immunes) is falling behind WW or Enhance? Warriors aren't keeping up in damage enough to justify bringing more than one most of the time right now (they went 0-3 by fight by group, if I followed right, and most 25s brought exactly one for RC/banners, presumably). WW monks were similarly rare...? Although they did receive a buff, I'm told that the damage variance is too RNG to rely on these days.

Smokebomb isn't really laughable either... negating boss mechanics, concentrating adds (for Megaera in particular, a la mass-grip from DKs) and a 20% DR just aren't really bad abilities, at all. I know it's not a +damage CD, but 20% adds up in some situations, and is +1 tank CD if needed.

I could be wrong and see us get benched through the entirety of next tier after the WW/Enh buffs, but I'm just not seeing it (and not sure how the new 5.4 changes to WW will change things).

During progression Enhance, WW and Feral didn't receive their damage buff. That coupled by how gratuitous our Assassination damage increase was (without taking new gear). Most people (including me) are talking about how things are NOW, where Assassination is on par with other melee in single target but lacks in cleave or AoE compared to say Feral or WW.

5.4 change to WW seems like a pretty big nerf to their mastery and RoRO, making the main reason why are so high right now non-applicable on 5.4 unless they revert the change or they compensate on other areas.

Smokebomb utility I would say it's bound to the 10vs25 debate, I can see why some 25-man Rogues would feel it's lackluster compared to unique things like Stormlash Totem or Skull Banner, or that Tricks is a drop in the ocean dps-wise.

I personally think that utility is fine as is, but I would like to see better burst AoE for Assassination. That, or truly excel at sustained AoE, making it our "niche", because some specs have everything on the AoE department while maintaining competitive Single Target.

Here I am going to talk about my personal experience, because Raidbot data says otherwise (could be because of the amount of top players playing WW, who knows). We have a WW Monk in our guild that can exceed by almost 30k dps my theoretical dps from Shadowcraft while having similar gear because of RoRO quite seamlessly, I don't see where the RNG is at, unlike Fire Mages.

Originally Posted by SilkDath

Whoever said tricks is laughable better not be maining a rogue, that would be tragic.

For e-pen and WoL whoring it may be excellent, compared to Stormlash Totem or Skull Banner it is what, 1/20th of their raid dps potential? Not saying it's laughable, but it is more of an e-pen enhancer than raid utility.

You're being more than a little overzealous in the second half of this.
All Rogues really bring isthe fact that they take very little damage when compared to other classes; and they can smoke bomb every 5mins (if everyone stacks in it, which isnt possible on many encounters).

Rogue raid utility comes down to Smoke Bomb and their own survivability. That's pretty much it.
They're not that great at switching targets, and they don't AoE very well in many situations.
It's fine that they're focused on single-target; and 1-target cleave - but it's lame how all 3 specs effectively play the same - and that the spec that pulls the numbers now has more waiting than ability use, in the rotation.

I would rather be playing a DK; which has a smoother resource system and with each spec playing completely differently - and has a shorter cooldown on their magic-damage preventer; which gives them DPS - as well as AMZ; which accounts for more damage reduction and can be used more freuqently than Smoke Bomb.

No, I am really not, and especially not in the second half of that post which was about h sc and dungeons (and bres depending on where you divide the half). I wasn't really overselling anything, and the only one fitting your description was the person I replied to. Though before I get into it more, I'll consider what you have to say as a meaningful comment when your own post doesn't show how your lack of knowledge on the subject.

Other people may have tried to over sell rogue utility (such as the person the person I replied to replied to... ok that was confusing). I'm not the one listing 'can kite' as the utility a class brings... I didn't list out a huge list of awesome rogue utility. We have some minor bonuses and minor faults like most classes, those (including the stuff you threw in there) aren't really worth bringing to the discussion because while you might say bring a warrior for cry/banners over a rogue for that, you aren't likely to bring an enh shaman or whatever because they can target swap easier because while true, it really isn't going to be significant enough. Things like the standard buffs or kiting especially don't warrant inclusion into the utility discussion.

You seem to be saying AMZ > bomb. I won't argue the other way around, but you are definitely wrong. For example, 20% of the damage you take on a rampage on HM Meg over 7 seconds is more than what AMZ blocks. You are also ignoring the other utility of smoke bomb where you can interfere with mechanics. You can smoke bomb on HM council and block a frost bite from ever getting cast which is far, far more useful than anywhere you could toss an AMZ on that fight. Now bomb does have a 1 minute longer cooldown (yes thats right, 1 minute longer).

Fun? Well they are tedious to level (seriously level 66 for FoK - fucking fix that!) but I wouldn't say they aren't fun. I'm kind of bored of Rogues after maining one for several years but they're still a very cool class. Not without their issues, and maybe not as sexy as some newer/recently refurbished classes, but still very solid. I'd maybe tweak a few mechanics and create a bit more diversity between specs, that's all.

I feel like my Rogue can handle just about anything (except soloing haha), has a tool for any situation. That's how a Rogue should be I guess.

Originally Posted by D3athsting

Lol @ cheat death being useful, it should be renamed "delay death", cauterize is 100 times better...

The fuck?

Cheat Death Passive Talent
Requires Rogue
Requires level 45
An attack that would otherwise be fatal will instead reduce you to no less than 10% of your maximum health, and damage taken will be reduced by 80% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 90 seconds.

Cauterize
Requires Mage
Requires level 60
An attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 50% of your maximum health, and you will burn for 40% of your maximum health over the next 6 sec.

Cauterize cannot occur more than once every 2 min.

If anything Cheat Death is better.

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Originally Posted by Kulestu

And if you really think that smoke bomb in 25mans is as powerful as a heroism or stormlash totem you're sorely mistaken. Smoke bomb is strong, but it's one of the weakest raid cooldowns around, and tricks is just laughable. 15% increased damage for 6 seconds on a 30 second CD is pretty laughable overall. That's 3 moves for most people, potentially 4.

6/30 = 0.2
0.2*0.15 = 0.03

So if you're tricksing someone on cooldown you will increase their total damage by 3%, on average. If you time your tot during burst, you can give them significantly more. Seriously, get RSA or another addon that whispers to the person how much damage the tot is giving them. I ran dungeons & scenarios with a brewmaster friend and tricksed him on huge AOE pulls, you should've seen how much damage that was. My old raid group used to beg me for tot all the time lol.

5.4 change to WW seems like a pretty big nerf to their mastery and RoRO, making the main reason why are so high right now non-applicable on 5.4 unless they revert the change or they compensate on other areas.

Here I am going to talk about my personal experience, because Raidbot data says otherwise (could be because of the amount of top players playing WW, who knows). We have a WW Monk in our guild that can exceed by almost 30k dps my theoretical dps from Shadowcraft while having similar gear because of RoRO quite seamlessly, I don't see where the RNG is at, unlike Fire Mages.

RoRO is the major source of RNG for WW monks atm - ask any WW or feral or Spriest or Demo-lock what the difference between 10 and 15 procs during a single encounter is like (RoRO/UVLS) and they'll writhe in agony at you - which will, I guess, be gone, but I'm not sure how the the new mastery system will allow them to keep up. I guess we'll have to see on that front.

I could see Enhance being a threat if they genuinely caught up to us on single target and had a cleave advantage... Stormlash totems can be chained together for effect, where a lot of other things see greatly diminished returns when used at "not optimal" times (including skull banner - the first is WAY more valuable than the second), but I think that the biggest issue we're likely to see remains unchanged - ranged DPS. The one advantage ranged have over all melee... not being melee. Enhance doesn't have our self-survival (which sees some weird applications like multi-group soaking for Ro'shak or diving damage on H Lei Shen, getting huge uptime on Jin'rokh's pools, etc.), so I think we'd still at least have a tug of war... but for now it all remains in the future, I think.

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Originally Posted by Mormolyce

So if you're tricksing someone on cooldown you will increase their total damage by 3%, on average. If you time your tot during burst, you can give them significantly more. Seriously, get RSA or another addon that whispers to the person how much damage the tot is giving them. I ran dungeons & scenarios with a brewmaster friend and tricksed him on huge AOE pulls, you should've seen how much damage that was. My old raid group used to beg me for tot all the time lol.

I didn't think to mention that, but some very well-timed TotT casts can have a REALLY big effect. Tricks an ele sham about to open on ice walls, or a demo lock before the start of council... those dots/that burst carries a LOT of weight. 1 TotT cast (rare, to see quite this amount, I'll grant) is quite capable of totaling the range of 750k+... it might also work for the upcoming changes to affliction's Soul Swap mechanic. I'll have to check... that would be overly large and need a nerf.

Oh a fun "utility" "ability" no one has said yet is that out of any class out there rogue's have the highest chance to survive a wipe to mass ress to create less down time from people running back!

Not really raid utility but I do enjoy not dying and saving my 300 stat food buff

Actually that would be Hunters if there's not a huge amount of AoE involved, you should be using Vanish and Prep as a dps cooldown (there are times where you wipe when there's 10 seconds remaining for Vanish to come up, though).

Whoever said tricks is laughable better not be maining a rogue, that would be tragic.

Tricks is laughable, and so is your poison use. /trollface.jpg

Bad trolling aside, the reason why Rogues are strong apart from DPS and interrupts in PvE is that we don't have to be babysat with a healer for a lot of mechanics this tier. We can cloak the application of ionization, letting us have maximum up time in the pool, on Jin'rohk. Horridon, we can CloS alot of the debuffs completely or the effects they give (DPSing through confusion curse is possible with CloS up). Smoke Bomb can be used for LoS or Damage Reduction, which if timed right, can be used to stop the application of Frostbite on Council. I can go on for each fight on how Rogues can easily deal with a mechanic for nearly every fight this Tier, which leads onto a chain effect to making it easier for Tanks or Healers.

People who say rogues are bad probably have several reasons combined, which are most likely:
-Rogues are the most hated and annoying class in PVP.
-Rotations are rudimentary and boring compared to other classes.
-Rogues have had the least amount of changes since WoW launched.
-Rogues are known for having the best single target dps, but we don't have any raid utilities.
and most importantly - people don't think rogues are bad, please dont make it a fact.

I think rogues are awesome as it's my main for 6 years but I also see a ton of underplayed rogues and people that just use 0 of the things that make them awesome. When I raid I like to try to come bottom or as low as possible on damage taken, whilst also aiming for top damage. I love the fact that I am in charge of my own health so much, it means healers can focus on healing other classes first while I take care of myself by feinting and cloaking mechanics. Plus I absolutely adore the newish smoke bomb utility, it feels awesome to have a raid cooldown to help out after all these years. I've been raiding with another rogue for 2 years now and it's only really in the last 6 months that I have stopped having to remind him to feint and cloak, so many rogues seem to think there is nothing to do but dps.

Plus the survivability! Oh my gosh I use that so much. I can often take bosses for plenty long enough to res a tank, and now that symbiosis gives us growl it helps even more. Or if something else goes badly, our maintank will shadowmeld the boss onto me to reset his stacks and we'll be fine. Our group was pretty dodgy bad at the time of normal garalon so our first kill of him was done with 2 rogue tanks and 4 healers.

The simple fact is that there are a lot of bad Rogues. Personally I think it's a combination of Vanilla/TBC and the last patch of Cata during all of which Rogues could kill people effortlessly; such as in the aforementioned last Patch of Cata where 2-4 Backstabs/Ambushes was enough to kill most people in PvP. MoP however, shifted the focus in PvP greatly; damage is pretty much inconsequential without CC and Healing, which have became nigh game breaking in importance. Though easier in PvE, people rarely use them to their full potential.

"A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't." - Roger Scruton

Originally Posted by Wells

I see no point in compelling integration. If you can't make your society sufficiently enticing to integrate willingly, then perhaps its not so superior.

Sure, I can. We run usually 2 shaman and 2 mages at least. Want to know what 3 of their lust/time warps do? Absolutely nothing. 1 person is all you need and the rest add no utility. Every rogue always adds a smoke bomb. Smoke bomb is infinitely stackable. Lust, you get one and all the others are worthless. So add another mage/shaman to our raid and the utility we gain from his lust/warp is 0. Add another rogue to our raid and the utility we gain from his bomb is not 0.

And really, you want to include extremely generic raid buffs like dark intent? We have a couple of those too as does every single damn class in the game. Ability to kite? Rogues can kite... almost every damn class can kite. You are just spewing every minor thing you can think of no matter how trivial and no matter if rogues and every other class does it too.

And the battle res... again you get 3 total (or 1 in 10m). 4 classes can battle res. I don't see how you are filling a raid with anything resembling a decent comp without one. One of the only melee without one you say? You sound incredibly ignorant of class mechanics. 2 classes that can melee have battle resses. Paladins (holy can get one but the melee paladins relevant here can not), shamans, rogues, warriors, and monks do not have battle resses. Thats 2 with and 5 without.

These rogues you do heroic scenario's with must be as ignorant about rogues as you. I can tank a heroic scenario just fine. No, I can't full heal from 10%, but that doesn't matter because I don't drop that low.

And one of your selling points is tanking dungeons... I can tank every dungeon on my rogue just fine (actually I bet any melee dps could).

Apparently rogues sucking so bad and bringing inferior utility is why none of the top 5 25H guilds brought any to most of progression, and certainly no guild, even Blood Legion, would find a reason to bring 5 to Iron Qon...

I'm sorry, but I've got a hard time parsing your statement that our damage and utility (both) aren't top-tier when every 25H guild brings rogues (1-5, mostly 2-4) by fight during progression. We're not talking about one group - rogues were a desired class to have around during progression this tier. Some of those were alts; they swapped to bring a rogue to the group.

Do you want to bring some links showing how rogues are falling behind in damage or elaborate further on how our utility (smokebomb, absurd personal survival/immunes) is falling behind WW or Enhance? Warriors aren't keeping up in damage enough to justify bringing more than one most of the time right now (they went 0-3 by fight by group, if I followed right, and most 25s brought exactly one for RC/banners, presumably). WW monks were similarly rare...? Although they did receive a buff, I'm told that the damage variance is too RNG to rely on these days.

Smokebomb isn't really laughable either... negating boss mechanics, concentrating adds (for Megaera in particular, a la mass-grip from DKs) and a 20% DR just aren't really bad abilities, at all. I know it's not a +damage CD, but 20% adds up in some situations, and is +1 tank CD if needed.

I could be wrong and see us get benched through the entirety of next tier after the WW/Enh buffs, but I'm just not seeing it (and not sure how the new 5.4 changes to WW will change things).

I know you're a moderator but that is some of the worst logic I've ever heard. You're bringing up an exceptionally small sample size on a fight where the rogue raid cooldown is actually very usable (can't be said for MOST fights in ToT).

No one's sitting here saying rogues are bad, I've made that disclaimer at least twice now and it doesn't seem to make it into your quotes when you try to "prove" me wrong. I'm telling you that rogues are no longer the best at their roles and that hybrid classes are doing our pure role better than we are. WW monks are the best example for the current tier, and geared enhance shamans are beginning to take some raid spots pretty quickly.

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Originally Posted by bigfootbigd

People who say rogues are bad probably have several reasons combined, which are most likely:
-Rogues are the most hated and annoying class in PVP.
-Rotations are rudimentary and boring compared to other classes.
-Rogues have had the least amount of changes since WoW launched.
-Rogues are known for having the best single target dps, but we don't have any raid utilities.
and most importantly - people don't think rogues are bad, please dont make it a fact.

Lack of AoE and ability to swap target (granted, Glyph of Redirect is changing that) are pretty damn major. Our single target is one of the best, but it's not far enough ahead to really make it stand out. Mages easily keep up with us on single target; warlocks with UVLS easily keep up with us on single target and have three viable specs and pretty clearly demolish us on AoE and target-switching; RoRO Monks/Feral druids are on par with us on single-target and quite clearly out damage us on AoE, and I think you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that smoke bomb is stronger than tranq and a b-rez.

Because this evidently needs to be said multiple times: I'm not saying rogues are bad. I'm saying that we're hailed as the kings of single target and really don't bring that much excellent single-target damage to the table compared to other classes. Sure, we're great at staying alive, but so are most players with their salt; but we're severely lacking in AoE and raid cooldowns. Smoke bomb has its obvious uses, but it's nowhere near what others bring.

Outrageous dps doesn't count as utility... and I wasn't arguing rogue utility vs shaman utility. The implication from the post I quoted was a class's blood lust alone exceeds all rogue utility, and I disagreed because the blood lust in most situations adds nothing where as rogues always have a smokebomb. Had the original line been "than a class that has blood lust and storm lash," I quite likely would have agreed.

Outrageous dps doesn't count as utility... and I wasn't arguing rogue utility vs shaman utility. The implication from the post I quoted was a class's blood lust alone exceeds all rogue utility, and I disagreed because the blood lust in most situations adds nothing where as rogues always have a smokebomb. Had the original line been "than a class that has blood lust and storm lash," I quite likely would have agreed.

That was my original post and that was my point, I don't remember which post you quoted, but I made sure to point that out. Also, utility is only a small portion of the gripe that people have with rogues. It's pretty obvious that Blizzard has done away with the "pure's are god-tier DPS and hybrids have to deal with it", but I also think it's pretty obvious that a class that only has one option for a role and a class that brings minimal non-damage use to a raid should be doing more than others. How much more is definitely up for debate; I think it should be more than negligible (which it largely is right now), and less than it's been in the past. I know that's vague and not particularly helpful, but my point is that we either need a slight damage boost, a fix to our AoE, more viable other specs (looks like they're looking to change Combat as per today's blue post) or some better raid utility.

So I went to shadowcraft and screwed around with the settings page: Using TOT on cooldown is a 3000 DPS loss in my current gear, for losing that GCD every 30 seconds. If I don't use it and receive it on cooldown, I gain 5000. That's 2000 net DPS you're gaining there. Really, I only end up using ToT on the fire mage in our group, for pretty obvious reasons. When you want to increase a classes' damage with only a few seconds to do it, pick one that bursts and increase it during that burst.

That said, ToT is overall not nearly what you're (generally in this thread, not Sesshou in particular). Stormlash totem, on the other hand, increases my DPS alone by 2800. At 2-3 players affected, it's done more with 1 GCD than a fight's worth of ToT does for a player. Any competent shaman won't be using stormlash unless the DPS can get the most out of it (5-6 in 10man, 15-17 in 25man). ToT pales in comparison to stormlash and they fill pretty similar roles (increasing damage). In fact, I think it's even worse that ToT eats up GCDs and only increases one players' damage by a largely negligible amount.

Lol @ cheat death being useful, it should be renamed "delay death", cauterize is 100 times better...

m8 sry but I think you are in big wrong. Cheat death is very strong and useful in pve and almost give you second life, I really cant dicribe how I found it to be useful tin a lots of situations on boss encounters !!!